Word: towns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Except for a fine old stucco church on the weed-grown plaza, the sleepy rubber town of Cametá has only two noteworthy buildings: a nondescript, 10-ft.-square structure housing a brand-new well, and a little white municipal health center. Both are the work of a joint U.S.-Brazilian organization called Servico Especial de Saude Publica (Special Public Health Service...
When SESP came to Cametá in 1944, the town's 550 families were getting their drinking water from the silt-laden Tocantins River. Their only plumbing facilities were the jungle bush behind their rickety shacks. Cametá had no doctor, and there is no record of how many Cametenses died each year from dysentery, hookworm, malaria and typhus, but these and other communicable diseases accounted for 55% of all deaths in the Amazon region which includes Camet...
...from. SESP's new well, safe drinking water is carried through Brazilian-made pipes to faucets spotted across the town. There are SESP-built privies behind the houses. DDT has even made it possible to sleep without a mosquito...
...antiseptic-smelling medical center, a staff of 14 SESP doctors and technicians are working on a program that has already rid the town of malaria, of nearly all hookworm, and cut the remaining cases of amoebic dysentery...
...hearty and likable, though newsmen wince when he calls them "buddy-boy." (He calls Gable "Clarkie.") Once he proudly noted in his column that his seven-year-old daughter has a standard answer to kids who ask what her father does: "He writes the best damn column in town, and if I don't say so, they twist...